McAdow delights with quirky films starring peanuts

Friday

Ron McAdow, a Concord resident and executive director of the regional conservation organization Sudbury Valley Trustees, has a thing about peanuts.

Ron McAdow, a Concord resident and executive director of the regional conservation organization Sudbury Valley Trustees, has a thing about peanuts.

For McAdow, it's not so much about the flavor, but the shape of the individual peanuts. The legumes and members of the pea family that are currently persona non grata at the grocery store are the "stars" of quirky short films McAdow created for children back in the 1970s.

Now, two of his stop-action animation films, "Hank The Cave Peanut" and "Captain Silas," are available for direct download or rental through Amazon.com.

Long before "reduce, reuse, recycle" became a cultural mantra, McAdow was in the groove. In addition to a cast full of peanuts with personality, the whimsical films include sets and props full of creative repurposing such as a man's shoe for a sailing ship, a fork as an untamed beast and a washcloth as a sea serpent.

We recently got together with McAdow, who also writes the "Knowing Our Place" column for the Daily News, to talk about his films.

Q: How did you get started in filmmaking?

A: In college ... my friend Kevin (Brown) and I decided to make films just for fun. Then he got this idea of doing one-frame-at-a-time animation. We came out to Holliston together, rented a house and started making films for Channel 5. They had just started production of a children's program, "Jabberwocky" (which was produced in the early 1970s). We did short animation that fit into the theme that week (while also working on independent projects like "Hank The Cave Peanut").

A: I was sitting there with some peanuts when I was in college and thought, "hmm, these would work." They had a lot of charisma. They were perfect for children's television because they played down the differences in size and color (race).

A lot of the fun of it was (how to make expressions)...the pirates had little earrings and eye patches.

Q: How was filmmaking influential to your life?

A: I think I was always creative, in a playful way, and the peanut movies where an extension of that. I probably spray-painted more popcorn in my young manhood than anyone ever had (the "Captain Silas" film includes several scenes of the sea, which was blue popcorn). I was (also) interested in writing as well as the filmmaking.

Q: How did you move from stop-action animation filmmaker to executive director of a conservation group?

A: When the "Infinity Factory" was canceled, I decided this was as good a time as any to see what else there was. I went to stay for a while with my family in Houston. A childhood friend of mine had become a camp director. I found myself working in the camp and really loved working with children (and I got immersed in nature). We would show the "Hank" movie every rainy day and the kids just loved it. I came back to New England (a few years later) really in love with nature. I found SVT and they wanted me to do some writing for them. Meanwhile, I'm making my living teaching and doing educational software and multimedia communication. During the same time, I was volunteering (for SVT and it eventually turned into a paying job).

Q: How have the technological advances made filmmaking different today from when you were working?

A: It's nice now because you can do computer animation on the screen and there's no delayed gratification. With film, you shoot many, many hours and you send it to strangers who dip it in chemicals and, hopefully, send it back to you. I don't think it was beneficial to have that long delay.

Q: What are your thoughts about your films now being available for a wider audience?

A: It makes me so happy. I would get e-mail every once in awhile saying they love "Hank the Cave Peanut"; it's been available to a niche audience (through libraries for many years). When I first made it, there was no way for individual families to see it.

Now they can!

A 28-minute download includes both "Hank The Cave Peanut" and "Captain Silas" and is available at Amazon.com in the Video on Demand section for $7.99 to purchase or $1.99 to rent (http://www.amazon.com/Hank-Cave-Peanut- Captain-Silas/dp/B001NT0SLI/).

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